Ray Page
Bushwalker, 1902-2000

Her life was not always easy. Nellie Elizabeth Rachel Birt was born at Pahiatua, near Wellington in New Zealand; her mother died at her birth. She was raised by her sister who was 16 years older. Her two brothers were killed in World War I and the family broke up; young Ray was sent to a convent school. On leaving school she trained in agriculture and accountancy, and moved to Sydney in 1927. Here she became the accountant for Cahills restaurants, playing her part in running their theatre-tray service and the restaurant chain for the next 20 years.

At the same time, a friend, Peter Page, was transferred by the Bank of New Zealand to its Sydney branch. Peter and Ray joined the Sydney Bush Walkers club soon after it was formed in 1927. They helped preserve and purchase Blue Gum Forest and North Era Beach which became formative parts of the Blue Mountains and Royal national parks. Ray effectively lobbied to have the Wildflower Protection Act of the day improved to prevent picking native flowers growing on Crown land.

Peter and Ray were happiest while away from Sydney, bushwalking. While Peter was in the Army during World War II, Ray and her friends were searching for their rural retreat. They found it in the mountains above Jamberoo. While negotiating the property purchase from an estate with at least 13 beneficiaries, there was one woman in Sydney who would not let the sale go through. Either Ray or her friend Dorothy Hasluck went to see her every day, until Ray had a phone call. "You can have the land if you get that woman off my back."

In 1947 Peter and Ray gave up their Sydney jobs, married and moved to their alternative life on their mountain at Jamberoo. The early guest accommodation was in army tents with gravel floors. The Pages and friends, who bought the adjoining land, soon set up a small community of holiday cabins. Their property adjoined what is now Barren Grounds Nature Reserve, rich in native birds and wildflowers where Ray introduced visitors to the wonders of the local bush.

As well as their bushwalking friends, many of their early guests were refugees from war-torn Europe. At the Pages they found a friendly welcome, free of hostility or prejudice. Ray was the farmer, running goats and cows and growing vegetables and flowers on their 75 acres, selling any excess to their needs to supplement their meagre income. Peter was "mine host" to the guests, entertaining them, serving cocktails and driving them around in his old Jeep. Ray nursed Peter for several years before he died in 1977. For many years she was the only permanent resident on "her mountain".

In 1978, she fought cancer with the help of her positive attitude and the skill of a Wollongong surgeon who became a close friend.

She was a great story-teller; she told how during the war she watched from behind the trees on the foreshore, while the midget Japanese submarine was sunk in Sydney Harbour; about how she was a witness, in court, at the famous "Sydney Shark Arm murder case"; and of a young suspected accomplice to the murder who had been employed by her at Cahills as a theatre tray boy. Her home was always open to visitors, friends dropping in at all hours, often unheralded, knowing they'd be welcome, sometimes for a chat, maybe to show her the new baby or the pictures from an overseas trip.

With some assistance from her friends and neighbours, she continued to live in her home on "her mountain", run the cabins and care for her animals until she died after a short spell in hospital. She is survived by no close relatives but 250 people attended the funeral at her Jamberoo mountain home.

-Barry Duncan (first published in the Sydney Morning Herald)